Internal strategy documents and emails among Clinton staffers shed light on friendly and highly useful relationships between the campaign and various members of the U.S. media, as well as the campaign’s strategies for manipulating those relationships.

The emails were provided to The Intercept by the source identifying himself as Guccifer 2.0, who was reportedly responsible for prior significant hacks, including one that targeted the Democratic National Committee and resulted in the resignations of its top four officials. On Friday, Obama administration officials claimed that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for that hack and others, although they provided no evidence for that assertion.

As these internal documents demonstrate, a central component of the Clinton campaign strategy is ensuring that journalists they believe are favorable to Clinton are tasked to report the stories the campaign wants circulated.

At times, Clinton’s campaign staff not only internally drafted the stories they wanted published but even specified what should be quoted “on background” and what should be described as “on the record.”

One January 2015 strategy document — designed to plant stories on Clinton’s decision-making process about whether to run for president — singled out reporter Maggie Haberman, then of Politico, now covering the election for the New York Times, as a “friendly journalist” who has “teed up” stories for them in the past and “never disappointed” them. Nick Merrill, the campaign press secretary, produced the memo, according to the document metadata:

That strategy document plotted how Clinton aides could induce Haberman to write a story on the thoroughness and profound introspection involved in Clinton’s decision-making process. The following month, when she was at the Times, Haberman published two stories on Clinton’s vetting process; in this instance, Haberman’s stories were more sophisticated, nuanced, and even somewhat more critical than what the Clinton memo envisioned.

But they nonetheless accomplished the goal Clinton campaign aides wanted to fulfill of casting the appearance of transparency on Clinton’s vetting process in a way that made clear she was moving carefully but inexorably toward a presidential run.

Given more than 24 hours to challenge the authenticity of these documents and respond, Merrill did not reply to our emails. Haberman declined to comment.

Other documents listed those whom the campaign regarded as their most reliable “surrogates” — such as CNN’s Hilary Rosen and Donna Brazile, as well as Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden — but then also listed operatives whom they believed were either good “progressive helpers” or more potentially friendly media figures who might be worth targeting with messaging. The metadata of the surrogate document shows the file was authored by Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director of the campaign. As The Intercept previously reported, pundits regularly featured on cable news programs were paid by the Clinton campaign without any disclosure when they appeared; several of them are included on this “surrogates” list, including Stephanie Cutter and Maria Cardona:

The Clinton campaign likes to use glitzy, intimate, completely off-the-record parties between top campaign aides and leading media personalities. One of the most elaborately planned get-togethers was described in an April, 2015, memo — produced, according to the document metadata, by deputy press secretary Jesse Ferguson — to take place shortly before Clinton’s official announcement of her candidacy. The event was an April 10 cocktail party for leading news figures and top-level Clinton staff at the Upper East Side home of Clinton strategist Joel Benenson, a fully off-the-record gathering designed to impart the campaign’s messaging:

A separate email chain between Clinton staff (one that was not among those provided by Guccifer 2.0 but appeared on the DCLeaks.com site earlier this week) contains plans for a separate off-the-record media get-together in May. Food and drinks were provided by the campaign for the journalists covering it, on the condition that nothing said would be reported to the public.

Many of the enduring Clinton tactics for managing the press were created by the campaign before she even announced her candidacy. A March 13, 2015, memo from Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook provides insight into some of the tactics employed by the campaign to shape coverage to their liking. In particular, Mook was concerned that because journalists were assigned to cover Clinton, they needed to be fed a constant stream of stories that the campaign liked. As he put it, a key strategy was to “give reporters who must cover daily HRC news something to cover other than the unhelpful stories about the foundation, emails, etc.”

All presidential campaigns have their favorite reporters, try to plant stories they want published, and attempt in multiple ways to curry favor with journalists. These tactics are certainly not unique to the Clinton campaign (liberals were furious in 2008 when journalists went to John McCain’s Arizona ranch for an off-the-record BBQ). But these rituals and dynamics between political campaigns and the journalists who cover them are typically carried out in the dark, despite how significant they can be. These documents provide a valuable glimpse into that process.

Wait! Before you go on about your day, ask yourself: How likely is it that the story you just read would have been produced by a different news outlet if The Intercept hadn’t done it?
Consider what the world of media would look like without The Intercept. Who would hold party elites accountable to the values they proclaim to have? How many covert wars, miscarriages of justice, and dystopian technologies would remain hidden if our reporters weren’t on the beat?
The kind of reporting we do is essential to democracy, but it is not easy, cheap, or profitable. The Intercept is an independent nonprofit news outlet. We don’t have ads, so we depend on our members — 24,000 and counting — to help us hold the powerful to account. Joining is simple and doesn’t need to cost a lot: You can become a sustaining member for as little as $3 or $5 a month. That’s all it takes to support the journalism you rely on.Become a Member

Chris Hayes was on the list, yes, but he still has a foot planted firmly in the actually progressive field. Tonight, he had Glenn Greenwald on his show to discuss the Hillary emails, Wikileaks and the value and ethics of it all. (Hillary hacks hated it — they went quite berserk.)

Thank you for HONESTY in Reporting, don’t see much of this anymore.
It is OBVIOUS to anyone awake that Hillary Clinton and her backers like George Soro’s OWN the Media, control the Media, and sadly destroy any real sense of democracy in our country.

I hope that “The Intercept” will also do some HONEST coverage on all those Leaks released recently.

It’s important for Americans to know that Hillary Clinton is pushing for a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT, no more America via “Open Boarders”, “Total Gun Control” even by Executive Orders if necessary as she herself says in her paid speeches to Big Banks. Our own police forces will cease to exist, The United Nations (U.N.) will be given full authority over ALL of our healthcare, education, and security systems. This all goes completely AGAINST the United States Constitution and is considered TREASON.

The list has no one from RT, Vice, NPR, Guardian, the Atlantic, Harper’s, Rollingstone, Time, or FOX. Some of them could be secret friends.
NPR is biased for Hillary. FOX has better reporting now on the election than MSNBC, NBC, ABC, and CNN.

Speaking of the rancid press: Jeffrey Goldberg was just named Editor in Chief of The Atlantic. The same Jeffrey Goldberg who can’t read Israeli paper Haaretz any more because, doncha know, it’s “antisemitic.”

Disappointing to see Chris Hayes on this list (as a target if not someone who actually agreed to be used in this way which I don’t know). I’m not at all surprised about the rest of the “target list” particularly Rachel Maddow who used be so much better on Air America than she is now. Not that I necessarily agreed with all of her political positions, but she really has become an obsequious suck up to politicians in a way that is truly disturbing, as both an academic and journalist.

Of course over at Lawyers Guns and Money blog they are mocking The Intercept, and Greenwald and Fang as so unserious to not know and report on this story, and not accept that “this is just the way things are done, move along, nothing to see here.”

Some of them simply don’t get it. Same sort of centrist dupes and propagandists that don’t believe “corruption” can take place unless their is court-quality evidence of quid pro quo.

Like I’ve said repeatedly, other than Loomis, the place is precisely what’s wrong with the Democratic Party–low aspirations, small real world goals and a real comfort with almost every fucked up thing about America because, well, “realpolitick” or “no we can’t”.

there is one thing I would like before this endless campaign grinds to its miserable–and now, apparently inevitable–end, it is to ask all of my colleagues in this business to stop pretending that they are shocked by politics and the sharp elbows and sharper practices involved therein. Mock horror is a calamitous pretense on which to base your coverage of anything, let alone a vital presidential election that has been dragged onto rancid ground because one of our two major political parties nominated a vulgar talking yam.

Exhibit A: the latest scooplet from The Intercept, in which we discover that the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton literally wined and dined some influential political journalists–which, by the way, has been a practice of political campaigns ever since influential political journalists were setting type by hand and publishing their work by pasting it in the windows of their print shops.
As these internal documents demonstrate, a central component of the Clinton campaign strategy is ensuring that journalists they believe are favorable to Clinton are tasked to report the stories the campaign wants circulated. At times, Clinton’s campaign staff not only internally drafted the stories they wanted published but even specified what should be quoted “on background” and what should be described as “on the record.” One January 2015 strategy document—designed to plant stories on Clinton’s decision-making process about whether to run for president—singled out reporter Maggie Haberman, then of Politico, now covering the election for The New York Times, as a “friendly journalist” who has “teed up” stories for them in the past and “never disappointed” them.
I may never recover.

To me, anyway, this story’s essential news value resides purely in its sourcing–leaked documents hacked from the DNC–because that still sounds exotic and carries with it an air of international mystery. And even that is presented curiously. The Intercept continues:

The emails were provided to The Intercept by the source identifying himself as Guccifer 2.0, who was reportedly responsible for prior significant hacks, including one that targeted the Democratic National Committee and resulted in the resignations of its top four officials. On Friday, Obama administration officials claimed that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for that hack and others, although they provided no evidence for that assertion.
Both ends of that paragraph are strange and very vague. The source “identifies himself” as someone whose previous hacks have had a tangible effect on the campaign. This, apparently, gives the revelation more credibility than the flat statement from the administration, although there’s no more (or less) substance to the sourcing of the report than there is to the administration’s response. The earth-shaking revelation, of course, is that the Clinton campaign is trying to buy favorable coverage by courting what it perceives to be the influential members of the elite political press. The implication, which is both foul and unproven, is that it worked.
That strategy document plotted how Clinton aides could induce Haberman to write a story on the thoroughness and profound introspection involved in Clinton’s decision-making process. The following month, when she was at the Times, Haberman published two stories on Clinton’s vetting process; in this instance, Haberman’s stories were more sophisticated, nuanced, and even somewhat more critical than what the Clinton memo envisioned. But they nonetheless accomplished the goal Clinton campaign aides wanted to fulfill of casting the appearance of transparency on Clinton’s vetting process in a way that made clear she was moving carefully but inexorably toward a presidential run.

In other words, Haberman pretty much informed her readers accurately what was going on in the Clinton campaign, but that is given a sinister edge because of the way the information was obtained, and because it can be made to conform to a narrative of artificial mystery. This is some cheap work. For the record, I would have RSVP’d in the negative, were I invited, which I was not. That doesn’t make me better or worse than the people who may have accepted the invitation.

That doesn’t make me better or worse than the people who may have accepted the invitation.

That’s for you, Pierce, to say about you. But, to put it bluntly to you, I’ll god damned decide for myself if a reporter or journalist accepting such an invitation is something I’ll judge in the negative about any and all reporters and journalist who do so.

The irony of a curmudgeon reporter writing an entire article to express in his cliched,hackneyed curmudgeon speak his hard nosed, seen it all, can’t send me to the fainting couch sermon to the tiny people reporters who are beneath his station on-high.

Pierce has written, in my opinion, some very good and thoughtful informative stuff over the years. That one is just shit. Just because what is being written about is something that has happened before doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be bothered with, investigated and written about. If that were the case, then Pierce and a lot of other journalists might just as well throw in their bloody towels or take them to the beach, catch some rays and call it quits.

Pierce is simply wrong. Greenwald didn’t remotely suggest this story is “shocking.” He’s addressed that inane point multiple times on Twitter:

Glenn Greenwald [email protected] 5h5 hours ago
“Not shocking” is not the newsworthiness standard. No media outlet meets it with all articles. It’s just a way partisans dismiss reporting.

He’s also pointed that major outlets publish non-shocking stories every day.

Moreover, Greenwald has been (properly) writing scathing attacks on the corporate media for years, denouncing their access-journalism. Journalists are supposed to be adversarial to power– not fucking enjoying cocktails with the powerful at Manhattan soirees. Or frolicking with squirt guns together on the beach.

What Kitt said — Max was a speaker at an international human rights conference. He wasn’t a Russian journalist who has the beat of covering Russia who went to a cocktail party Putin put on for journalists who cover him.

Gil, I’ve decided you’re more stupid than dishonest. A bright person would have resisted what you posted, if they’d have thought of it at all.

A paid trip as a guest of the Russian govt and payment for speaking is fine but cocktails is proof of being subverted. The Russian govt has spent far more on Max then was spent by Hillary on any reporter at that party.
I love it when i get accused of being a robot. Ad homs rather than substance always display lack of a valid argument.

This ten minute or so video of Cenk Uygur of Young Turks explaining all of this not only is an excellent take and explanation, but it really shows how buffoonish Pierce’s combination self righteous old befuddle man/childish sermon was.

“The earth-shaking revelation, of course, is that the Clinton campaign is trying to buy favorable coverage by courting what it perceives to be the influential members of the elite political press. The implication, which is both foul and unproven, is that it worked.”

How, exactly, would you be able to tell whether these journalists were bought? It would be pretty hard, no? Sort of like the principle behind Bentham’s Panopticon — you will never know who is doing what, when. You will only be left with the eerie feeling that the spying is constant and unrelenting. No one can live that way.

This is the reason to avoid the appearance of impropriety. As a real journalist, this is what you owe to your readers. They should not have to guess when you are selling your pen.

Reality check: does anyone really think that political campaigns do not try to cultivate journalists? Really? Even this article admits at the end that it’s common practice! Of course the first 95% of the piece implies that something uniquely terrible has been going on. What you are seeing, I think, is unusual efficiency. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a good quality. Now can we please talk about policies?

The most recent Wikileaks revelations reveal that Trump is essentially a conspiracy, not by the Russians, but rather one effectuated by the msm at the implicit or otherwise suggestion of the DNC to elevate objectively risible and/or psychologically non-viable candidates such as Trump or Cruz to artificially sustained lead positions within the Republican pack so as to have what would essentially be a straw or bogey man as the Republican candidate for the presidency, enabling Hillary Clinton to have a (considering the demographic realities of the country) cake walk candidacy for the White House all while she pretends and maintains that the opposite is the case, i.e. that her opponent is formidable, albeit execrable, indeed, a serious threat to the constitutional order of the Republic, when in reality he is an artificially-elevated ‘pied piper’ buffoon, instrumentalized to lead the Republican presidential field in toto towards a ‘malarial swamp’ of political confusion and delusion, reflecting an almost Artaudian level of theatrical (political) irreality and perversity, of irrationality, incomprehensibility, even semiotic decomposition itself: a signal war consisting of amplifying up the ‘enemy’s’ signals (i.e. themes, messages, and methods) until they become indistinguishable from noxious and cacophonous static or white noise (ironically, considering his purportedly white nationalist demographic).
Trump is a political eructation elevated by the msm to the condition of an intolerably shrill and repetitive psycho-environmentally offensive noise: noxious and toxic to a majority of American voters (especially those evincing the psychologies of responsible heads of families) by Orwellian-cum-Machiavellian design.

It was a dark and stormy night, but despite the lowering gloom, the deep, impenetrable shadows, the rumble of distant thunder and the howling of the wind, the word salad was somehow able, magically — nay, mystically — to chop, assemble and toss itself.

If the Wash Post, NYT, etc. are explicitly coordinating with Clinton campaign (not just receiving information) — as some of the leaked emails imply and as the timing of the Access Hollywood video release certainly indicates — it seems like that’s a hard-money donation under federal election law, with a value way, way over the hard-money limit.

I’m very concerned about the direction of the mainstream press. Major newspapers (and TV) seem to be indicating their support of one presidential candidate over the other in daily coverage, no less. What happened to covering them fairly and then endorsing one (or neither)? I’m also stunned by the outright support for Clinton, the more dangerous of the two. (As far as I know, Trump, for all his faults, hadn’t murdered anyone or put national security at risk.) I can understand the media not supporting either but why the big push for Clinton, who probably should be in prison, not the White House. Where are the stories on the vast fortune ($150 million) the Clintons have amassed? Why the extensive coverage of the Trump video and almost nothing on the latest WikiLeaks releases? And in that vein, why is Bill Clinton, the nation’s serial womanizer who was almost impeached for lying under oath about Lewinsky, going to be allowed back in the White House? I don’t get it. And I don’t get the industry’s warped coverage of this campaign, to say the least.

There is nothing mysterious about mainstream media support for HRC. She represents the “safe” status quo: foreign wars and other entanglements to provide “incidents” needed to rationalize and expand the surveillance/police state; massive subsidies/regulations to support and eliminate any potential competition for the the corporate interests and other special interests groups in DC and NYC; and a few crumbs in the form of a Welfare State thrown at the masses who are the victims of this system. The mainstream media is owned by and entangled with this status quo.

Excuse me, but wasn’t Glenn Greenwald writing this kind of story about relationships between politico and the media? I recall him doing a story about journos and McCain BBQ. I find these kind of stories a form of “post-journalism”–not about issues or events, but more about journalism and the process. It is well known that newsmakers–politicians and others–cultivate relationship with the media and vice versa. This isn’t new, but to hype this as being “dark” is the same kind of stuff that Fox News and Breitbart runs about MSM. In other words, MSM is always the easy target of right and left media because MSM has greater access to those newsmakers.

This isn’t new, but to hype this as being “dark” is the same kind of stuff that Fox News and Breitbart runs about MSM.

No.

Those cesspools of crazy seriously think the media is all leftwing and liberal. They are unhinged.

As you note, Greenwald has been doing media criticism for virtually his entire journalistic career. One of the choicest is from 2010: Our hard-core, adversarial press corps. The sub-title says it all: “Leading ‘journalists’ play water sports with Rahm and Biden and proudly giggle about it later.”

BOTH CANDIDATES ARE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE – THIS SHOULD BE THE FUCKING HEADLINES TODAY AND EVERY FUCKING DAY. Apparently not even the Intercept dares say this, although Scahill comes close. — Maisie

I understand your frustration, and share it but, consider this: What exactly is the actual effect of the headlines that, say, Drudge’s site produces? They are a reasonable facsimile of what you insist must happen, in tone, if not in exact fact. And, to the extent that I am able to decipher, sites like that, that employ over-the-top hyperbole (again, in tone, if not fact) are largely dismissed except for a small slice of people who will follow them no matter what, because, ideology/dogma.

In my opinion, what has been done here, where Scahill, Greenwald and others have been providing serious fact-based critiques of the candidates, is more effectual if still representative of the long-haul slogging that is necessary part of making change happen.

Consider this Greenwald interview that I have posted here in comment sections multiple times, which does exactly what you are requesting, literally within the first minutes of the video:

Greenwald: Nobody knows what Donald Trump is going to be because he’s so unstable. And so, I think he’s mentally unbalanced, and he’s so driven by personal grievance and vendetta, and ego insecurities.

Hillary Clinton is, I think, a sociopathic and evil person who’s going to kill huge numbers of innocent people for her own opportunistic political gain.

Interviewer: How can it be that the two – you almost said it – like, the two most hated politicians in the United States are actually the two candidates for President? How the fuck can that be?

Greenwald: When political culture and the fabric of a nation gets really fucked up the political process ends up fucked up too. If you talk to his supporters they know that he says outrageous, disgusting things, that he’s kind of unstable, that he has been, you know, in a lot of ways a joke and a clown. That’s what they like about it because they want to burn the political system down.

It’s a good interview. Share it liberally. But realize that our two-party system has been entrenched and empowered for a very long time and it will take a long time to dismantle it and create other areas of influence. Every bit of that system will fight tooth and nail against this dismantlement. And simple screaming of headlines will not win that battle. It will, in fact, provide the basis for dismissal from “serious” consideration.

Is it then, in fact, pointless to do that work? No because it provides a relentless drip of criticism that erodes the support of the system. And support for the two-party system is taking hits. Polls show that. The continued slow rise of alternative candidates within the system (Trump & Sanders) and alternative parties without (Green & Libertarian), and the growing numbers of people who are pushing in many ways for true alternatives, show that too, even if it isn’t progressing as fast as we know it needs to.

It takes time and relentless effort to educate a critical mass of people to the many ways they have been marinating in cultural deceit. There are things/events that can push that mass over the edge, but we rarely see them coming in exact detail.

Will change arrive “in time”? No. Not for many of us. Should we give up hope and submit? No, though many of us are tired to the bone and filled with defeatism. In the meantime, we should shore up support where we find it, create ways to ally with people (where/when we can) who might not be our natural allies in other circumstances, and continue, as you note, to scream bloody murder wherever/whenever appropriate while still recognizing that people will often need a mountain of facts just to move them a molehill away from their preconceptions.

He really does get it. The entire interview is refreshing for a LOT of reasons.

p.s. to my above: My use of the “hyperbole” was perhaps intemperate or may appear dismissive. Not my intent. There are places where hyperbole should be used and reasonable people can differ as to frequency and tactics of such. I only intended to draw attention to the fact that repeated hyperbole tends to dilute the desired effects if only because it allows an avenue for attack that is not easily pursued when articles are written well and supplied with factual bases for the critiques, however appropriately hyperbolic they may be. The shorthand,

BOTH CANDIDATES ARE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE

will only go so far, and not very far at all, without supporting documentation and argumentation. Something all of us who support(ed) Snowden’s efforts ought to realize by now.

Do you have documentation showing that Mackey is on a Clinton apparatchik list somewhere? If so, then please provide it. I think there are people here who would find that interesting.

Mackey is, without doubt, a Clinton supporter. His writing here, on twitter and likely elsewhere support that irrefutably. But it’s a far cry from him throwing his support behind a given candidate to stating affirmatively that there exists proof of collusion between him (or TI) and that candidate’s machinery. Surely even you can recognize that truth.

Reporters are human and, as such, they will have their moments of, um, frailty as well. :-s

Proof the MSM are Democrat Operatives disguised as “journalists” who’s job it is to protect Democrats at all costs and destroy Republicans at every opportunity.

ABC News Reporter Martha Raddatz, Obama at her wedding…

CNN President Virginia Moseley is married to former Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Secretary Tom Nides.

ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos donated $75,000 to the Clintons personal “charity” was a top operative in Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign and then served as communications director of his White House.

ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman is married to Obama’s former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

ABC President Ben Sherwood is the brother of Obama’s Special Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood.

NBC General Counsel Kimberley D. Harris served as White House Deputy Counsel and Deputy Assistant to President Hussein Obama…

ABC News executive producer Ian Cameron is married to Susan Rice, Obama’s National Security Adviser.
Susan Rice is the one who went on the Five Sunday talk shows blaming Benghazi on a video… A talking point put forth by Ben Rhodes Security Adviser for Strategic Communications…. See next:
*******
Ben Rhodes is the guy responsible for floating out the video lie/narrative regarding Benghazi… No wonder CBS and the rest of the MSM didn’t cover the story… Couldn’t make Hussein Obama look incompetent, or worse, now could we. Oh, and by the way,

CBS News President David Rhodes just happens to be Ben Rhodes’ brother.

Both CBS News President David Rhodes and ABC News President Ben Sherwood, have siblings that not only work at the White House for President Obama, but they work at the NSC on foreign policy issues directly related to Benghazi.”

CNBC vice president of communications Brian Steel worked
in the Bill Clinton White House for Vice President Al Gore and held
three different positions in the Clinton administration, including two
in Clinton’s Department of Justice.

All presidential campaigns have their favorite reporters, try to plant stories they want published, and attempt in multiple ways to curry favor with journalists.

I don’t think D.J. Trump has any ‘favorite’ reporters (at least any ‘reporters’ that Glenn Greenwald would know.). And even if he did, I doubt he would ‘curry’ favour with them. .. other than the obligatory thank you note “checks in the mail”.
*certainly, Trump didn’t curry favor, or mince words, with last nights debate moderators \../

So, in a rare outburst of despair I asked my companions “what’s wrong with Jill Stein”? (I had ruled-out Gary Johnson from contention bc he didn’t know what a pussy was.)

“SHE’S UN-ELECTABLE” (i.e. not viable) the crowd roared (like, It’s in the Constitution or something!) … and returned their attention to the presidential Trump/Clinton debate.

Something must be done about Putin! He has no right to inform the American public how rigged our political system is; President Peace should slap him with more sanctions, so he can unite with China and Iran and, um..
How is this supposed to work?…USA! USA!

It’s bullshit that “nothing can be done.” Regular people are the ones who make it happen! They have a choice!

Then you should be able to answer the questions Maisie didn’t.She had written in anger that this site does not, every day, rant that “both candidates are unacceptable.” And I replied:

There’s not a damn thing that can be done about it. Even the kinds of things that make the Secret Service show up at your door if you talk about them are not possible. There’s simply not a remedy for the situation.

What can “regular people” do about the only two choices Maisie identifies? It’s going to be either Trump or Clinton. What plausible alternative is there that this site’s ranting “enough” about how both Trump and Clinton suck what bring about?

I don’t understand the question. I didn’t understand the secret service reference. We were probably all talking about different things anyway.

I meant something kind of boring I guess: that people talk as if they must choose one or the other when they do not. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy on a mass scale. My remark refers to not the true enthusiasts for one of the two candidates; it’s about the many people who talk in a self-pitying way like they are forced to vote a certain way. That irritates me because they are lying. They won’t own their choice. It’s all the other people’s fault, not theirs.

Yes. But that doesn’t change the reality that the only two people who can in any plausible scenario become president in 2016 are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. No matter what anyone writes at The Intercept, or how often they write it.

@Vic

it’s about the many people who talk in a self-pitying way like they are forced to vote a certain way.

I don’t know who you mean or what kind of “self-pitying” commentary you mean. I do know that most African-Americans and Muslim-Americans I read are voting for Clinton. And I completely understand why. I get why they’d think Trump would be even worse. (Hillary might well start WWIII, which would be pretty fucking awful, too.)

As long as they (or anyone) doesn’t try to regale me with Hillary’s purported “good points” and explain that she’s got this and that to commend her, I don’t judge that choice. As a vote of pure opposition to the unprecedentedly racist and unstable/erratic Trump, I can respect that choice.

Would be more compelling if people hadn’t been talking in exactly this way every four years, forever. Should have saved some of the “wolf” cries for Trump eh? And let’s get real: this same exact dynamic would have played out no matter who the Republicans put up. I was just reading an article written in 2012 about the dangerous Mitt Romney…..

It’s patronizing to give some voter groups a pass for supporting entrenched political mediocrity. What does that make the Hillary-refusers who come from those groups, freaks? Traitors? Irresponsibly indifferent to the perilous position of their people? I’m sure they get accused of all of that and more, and I don’t see any reason to act all MORE “understanding” about vicious hivemind behavior.

I don’t care if anybody enthuses about Hillary, really: cuz they really don’t, much. What they really do: demand zero criticism. Attempt character assassination on absolutely everybody who crosses them.

Finally, Hillary ain’t gonna start WWIII. The whole scary Russia thing is bogus, as was most of the Cold War posturing. Russia and the US don’t start fair fights. The Cold War was mainly a gentlemen’s agreement to have proxy wars (oh great for arms manufacturers of course).

also, to be a broken record on the main reason Jill Stein has “no plausible scenario” for victory:

People who won’t vote for her say they won’t vote for her because people won’t vote for her. Conveniently, these people leave themselves out of this fine calculation: it is the fault of others that they personally are forced to vote in what they call a responsible manner.

She understands why Muslim and black voters would not like the one guy who could end Zionism,and its terrible hold on American politics which has destroyed both black and Muslim communities worldwide.
If that is true,they deserve whatever fate HRC holds for them,although she won’t win,thank Allah.

You know – I’m not surprised the Republican Party’s imploding and ripping itself apart, or that the Democratic Party’s partially managed the same. They’re BOTH thoroughly corrupt parasites maintaining a system of unjust institutionalized privilege, insanely peddling influence to those consuming the planet and peoples in gluttonous fits of greed. Selling out OUR country’s constitution and citizens to empire builders is now the ONLY thing elected leaders accomplish, and that makes them worthless to voters.

Unconscionable violence perpetrated on “others” haunts their empire of greed and always will.

The emails were provided to The Intercept by the source identifying himself as Guccifer 2.0, who was reportedly responsible for prior significant hacks, including one that targeted the Democratic National Committee and resulted in the resignations of its top four officials. On Friday, Obama administration officials claimed that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for that hack and others, although they provided no evidence for that assertion.

The boilerplate that just won’t go away. And this time it has Glenn (a moment of silence). Although there is some very very limited push back, but lets be honest, at best a coded message being blinked by a kidnap victim.

It reminds me of the good old days when you couldn’t mention the word Iraq in a newspaper article without being forced by ownership to include a one paragraph boilerplate summation of the administration’s insane charges in their march to war.

So it seems every time leaked documents are mentioned by the Intercept we are going to get at least a paragraph of government butt nuzzling–for balance…I guess. There never was a view from nowhere. There was always only battles between journalists and ownership.

But why stop there? Why not include that administration officials think the emails are fake? Why not include that administration officials think that the Russians are doing this to throw the election for Trump? Why not include that journalists printing these emails are working with the Russians?

This is a strange comment, since Glenn and most here scoff at claims of Russian involvement in the election. He wrote a whole column denouncing the Democrats’ red-baiting and efforts to start up a new Cold War.

Since that same paragraph, in some form or another, has been used repeatedly in various articles here at the Intercept it seems pretty obvious that ownership is using the invisible hand of capitalism to influence the show.

Could you see Glenn writing that paragraph as anything but a satire of terrible journalism?

Why would ownership hire the likes of Scahill, Poitras, and Greenwald to run a site, only to try to undermine the kind of journalism they do? Do you really think Greenwald would stay if someone were altering, or inserting passages into, his pieces?

I’m not even sure what your objection to the passage is. It’s a fact that the Democrats and the FBI assert the hacks are being done by the Russians. Should that not be reported? Does reporting it connote complicity with those making the claim?

Without them providing any evidence, there’s no reason to blindly accept their claims. Again, Greenwald and most here don’t. The skepticism seems pretty strong.

Let’s follow the evolution of this boilerplate and you can decide if Glenn is responsible for writing the quoted paragraph.

Zaid Jilani wrote:

Powell’s private e-mails were leaked by D.C. Leaks, a website that has in the past shared hacked emails from U.S. political and military figures. D.C. Leaks has a relationship with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker that many allege to have ties with Russian intelligence. D.C. Leaks provided access to Powell’s emails to a number of reporters on Tuesday, including The Intercept.

Powell’s private messages were leaked by D.C. Leaks, an anonymously managed website that shares hacked emails from U.S. military and political figures. D.C. Leaks has a relationship with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker that many allege to have ties with Russian intelligence. D.C. Leaks provided access to Powell’s emails to a number of reporters on Tuesday.

The emails were released by the group DCLeaks, which in the past has shared hacked emails from U.S. political and military figures. The U.S. Intelligence Community announced Friday that it is “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails” that were made public “on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona.”

Now Glenn and Lee Fang write:

The emails were provided to The Intercept by the source identifying himself as Guccifer 2.0, who was reportedly responsible for prior significant hacks, including one that targeted the Democratic National Committee and resulted in the resignations of its top four officials. On Friday, Obama administration officials claimed that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for that hack and others, although they provided no evidence for that assertion.

First, I want to point out that the updated boilerplate is still dead wrong. On Friday, Obama administration officials did not claim that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for the DNC hack.

This is what was said:

The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

They don’t say that the DNC was hacked by Russia and the don’t say Wikileaks or DCleaks or the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are in involved in publishing documents hacked by Russia–only sites “like” Wikileaks, DCleaks or the Guccifer 2.0 online persona.

If you read what they actually wrote they don’t really say anything, just so much innuendo that if they were talking about Mexicans instead of Russians they would be leading a Trump rally.

So even the new improved boilerplate is still fucking wrong and full on propaganda.

Now either a whole bunch of journalists here have a need to write (independently of their own volition, without any coordination) essentially the exact same boilerplate message each encouraging a march to war against Russia–and let’s be fucking very clear and very honest about what kind of fire is being played with here–this is incredibly dangerous propaganda to be playing the standard he said/she said crap that unfortunately still passes for journalism these days.

It’s not enough to mindlessly repeat this crap and then tack on a throwaway line that the government hasn’t proven their case yet.

We have the US intelligence community trying to influence our election and march us to war, and whether you believe it is justified or not, that is exactly what they are doing. Repeating this propaganda but with the caveat that the government hasn’t proved their case yet is immoral journalistic malpractice.

The fact that the intelligence community is so overtly trying to influence our election, even assuming they had an air tight case that they were willing to publicly reveal it, should be incredibly controversial and require critical analysis, not mindless repetition.

Glenn and others have been reporting on how the intelligence community, the warhawks, and the financial elites have been behind Clinton from the beginning.

Yes, the government, or at least many in it, is trying to influence the election. Clinton has always been the establishment’s preferred candidate. The reporting on this site has actually exposed this. How you can argue that Greenwald wittingly or unwittingly part of the rigging of the system is simply baffling. He exposes the rigging.

I don’t think Glenn is infallible, and I don’t believe that when Glenn says or does something, then that automatically means he is correct or on the right side of an issue.

And more importantly, the Intercept does not get the benefit of the all credibility and trust that Glenn has built up over time just because they employ him. Salon sucked despite Glenn. The Guardian sucked despite Glenn. I see no reason for this trend not to continue.

I want to repeat again that I don’t think Glenn wrote that copy.

The interesting thing about the boilerplate is that it only seems to apply to Guccifer 2.0.

Wikileaks doesn’t get the disclaimer. If the Intercept uses something from wikileaks, they mention that it is from wikileaks, and then get on with the story, but if the information comes directly from Guccifer 2.0, then we get the boilerplate with the inevitable bullshit about Russia.

LNC, you should remove the tin foil from your head — things are getting overheated. The paragraph you cite as “boilerplate” is perfectly reasonable. Especially this sentence: “On Friday, Obama administration officials claimed that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for that hack and others, although they provided no evidence for that assertion.”

The notion that “ownership” is dictating anything to GLENN GREENWALD is as preposterous as it is undemonstrated.

(And before I see the usual bullshit about my purportedly always defending Glenn, please be advised that in addition to the fierce disagreement he and I had over the nature of Charlie Hebdo, more recently on Twitter we’ve been at it a bit over Maz Hussain-Syria, and the various ways such interventionists malign good people such as Max Blumenthal.)

Consider the possibility that Putin has had Hillary’s emails for years, and has been blackmailing her. After all, Russia got no fighting against them/Syria, much of our uranium, and superb favors for their ally Iran.

If you were HRC, wouldn’t you lash out and want to blame the Russians for any hacking?

The reason there is no evidence provided by Obama’s administration that Russia is hacking, is because neither Hillary or Obama want it known that HRC and possibly Obama, are being blackmailed. And the only evidence, is what Putin told them quietly in person, and their actions of giving Putin what he wanted.

Consider the possibility Mossad has all damaging facts about the hell bitch for the last 30 odd years, and threatens,by their possession of the MSM(and web),to reveal all.(And consider that same scenario for all our pols)
Which means they have her by the yuk a puks, a far more likely and believable story than Russophobic nonsense.
And of course this is exposed daily by their capitulation(she and Congress)to Israel.
Point out evidence of HB fealty to Russia,as it seems all she does is attack them,which of course belies any possible blackmail.

Sigh… Bill Maher… used to be “must watch”, now its “lets guess– he is going to go the easy cheap route and slam the Palestinians, anyone who thinks there is a god and of course the super easy slam DJT… THATS good political satire and comedy?? Too much weed??

Actually there is,as in the olden days their was individual ownership of various news outlets with different points of view on just about everything,and now its one big borg of BS,all for HRC and all totally dominated by zionists,dual citizens,an unheard of prior to modern time phenomenon,which of course is in no way beneficial to US.

1) On foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is reckless and dangerous and destabilizing, a real war pig in bed with the Saudis and the Israelis and bent on continuing the PNAC-CNAS regime change agenda across the Middle East and North Africa and Central Asia, no matter how much bloodshed results. It should be clear by now that she was the main force behind the Libya debacle and was involved in shipping Libyan weapons to Syria to help kick off the civil war there in alliance with Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Turkey and Israel, and that also kicked off the refugee crisis.

2) On domestic policy, Trump is just as dangerous as Clinton is on foreign policy – anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, tax cuts for the wealthy, obsolete energy policies – but not actually much different from the status quo, as anyone paying attention to Obama deportations or fracking/offshore oil drilling or Wall Street ‘partnerships’ can see; Trump is nevertheless worse than Clinton on domestic policies by any rational standard of measurement.

Neither has a plan that adds up for infrastructure, education, manufacturing, health care, or addressing wealth inequality; that would require major changes in U.S. foreign military spending at the very least; this would upset Democratic and Republican Congressional insiders, State and Pentagon bureaucrats, and all the private contractors who feed at the government trough – the whole corrupt sleazy clan, the apparatchiks and functionaires of this failing system who are dead set against the necessary reforms.

Thus, people should not be worrying about which clown ends up in the Oval Office, so much as they should be coming up with plans to defeat their agendas, perhaps via criminal investigations and impeachments and supporting the opposition in Congress; because the real war against the American public’s interests will begin immediately after the election is over (with the assistance of many media outlets, don’t forget).

Hillary’s wars, Donald’s walls – neither can be allowed, the results would be terrible.

Trump is less dangerous because his every action would be opposed by establishment. Only overwhelming popular support would be able to push through any Trump initiative. This state of affairs would be an improvement on the status quo.

Beautiful, brilliant post– I will send this along to my American friends. Look beyond the show of the election– it is orchestrated and before the balloons are down, you are right ” the real war against the American public’s interests will begin immediately”

Yawn.
The only thing that is terrible is the death wish of some Americans to be like the rest of this chaotic impoverished corrupt world,and dispute the fact that America First means anything but what it implies,America first,which of course should be a default position for any American patriot.
Hey DeNiro,go to your knew found chosen land Italy,we won’t miss you at all,we have your old tapes.(All the new ones suck)I guess zollywood got to him.
And he grew up on mean streets?Sheesh,it must be easy street now.
All of US who grew up on mean streets are for Trump.

Yep corruption , i bet some of them even received compensation to be an extension of the Clinton campaign. The media is supposed to be unbiased and neutral. They are supposed yo report the truth and the facts.News outlets are as politicized and corrupt as our politicians.

I have to applaud Jon Schwarz’s comments that the Democrats are willing to “hug” any Republican so long as it doesn’t immediately impact the current race.

Schwarz strikes me as the kind of decent person who ends up voting for the Democrat in a pinch every time….not that I really know.

So, extend that trenchant criticism out and apply it to regular people. In whose interest do we consider each election in a tiny bubble as if there were no past and no future and saying “which ONE of these TWO candidates who are likely to win will you pick? It is your ONLY CHOICE, think no further”……

…….and then they compound the insult to our intelligence by pretending that this Voter Surrender should be called Voting Strategically.

Trump didn’t wilt again, as I suspected, but he did often ramble randomly (which I foresaw with my amazing psychic powers), and Clinton did lie profusely (also something predicted by Madame Masie’s Crystal Ball).

The media seems convinced Trump has somewhat turned this around, because the media is part of the establishment putting on this fucking theater and it’s not over until Miss Piggy sings.

BOTH CANDIDATES ARE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE – THIS SHOULD BE THE FUCKING HEADLINES TODAY AND EVERY FUCKING DAY. Apparently not even the Intercept dares say this, although Scahill comes close. Someone influential should point it out, because this election year is the year America has gone full retard and proposed two grim reapers for the highest office in the land.

But Madame Maisie predicts Americans will be too fucking stupid to see this until it’s too late.

I think/hope it’s conditioning, propaganda, dumbing-down etc… A deliberate establishment attempt to quell individualism and non-conformism. But then I’m not old enough to know if we’ve always been this way. Movies from the past indicate we used to have some degree of dignity, and a respect for originality, but perhaps that was just the self-flattering propaganda of the day. What do you think? Genuinely curious.

I wish I could say there’s a glimmer of hope left, but after seeing so many fucking people today just *oblivious* to the very real lethal threat these two candidates represent, giddy with silliness about how entertaining all this is, fretting over perceptions that don’t mean anything… I’ve just lost all hope.

Would a Liberal Socialist state make you feel at ease because that’s where we are headed with HRC and Obama.
They have been putting us through the 8 steps involved with a man by the name of Saul Alinsky and there’s one step left to complete – GUN CONTROL AND STATE OF POLICE

BOTH CANDIDATES ARE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE – THIS SHOULD BE THE FUCKING HEADLINES TODAY AND EVERY FUCKING DAY.

Most people commenting here already know that. Most of the writers would agree. But what would be the point of ranting about it every single day?

There’s not a damn thing that can be done about it. Even the kinds of things that make the Secret Service show up at your door if you talk about them are not possible. There’s simply not a remedy for the situation.

That isn’t what I mean – I’m just saying that an alternative media platform with some clout could establish this meme and express it consistently like a beacon of truth in a milieu of “this madness and unearthly risk is all normal and amusing” propaganda. A lot of people respect the intercept for not pulling its punches, but in the realm of warning about BOTH of the two Hitlers in the wings it does indeed hold back more than is sensible. It isn’t about telling people what to think, but about expressing the unheard voice of the observant, extreme skeptic who sees the emperor is naked.

There is no major voice that I’ve seen saying that both candidates are extremely dangerous and totally unacceptable – except of course for Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka. They say it.

Even adversarial media hasn’t got the wherewithal to point out that we are seriously, seriously fucked if either one of Trump or Clinton take power. And this is not a situation with opportunities to learn from our mistakes – we are on the verge of entrenching the forces who refuse to see the dangers of their actions, at a time when we can’t afford even one more year of going the wrong way.

There’s not a damn thing that can be done about it. Even the kinds of things that make the Secret Service show up at your door if you talk about them are not possible. There’s simply not a remedy for the situation.

What “impact” or “needed attention” would change the fact that nothing can be done?

Unfortunately, Vic, that just isn’t true. Indeed, that’s the bullshit, part of the “mushroom treatment” the elites have designed and implemented for the masses: keep ’em in the dark and feed ’em shit.

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

I evaded your point? Possibly, since I was making one of my own! I get that you’re saying nothing can be done to stop the charade, but isn’t there any room in your understandable defeatism for momentum to challenge the system even if that seems futile? I’ve lost optimism, but not my spirit of defiance!

If the Intercept would say Hell No to both establishment candidates, every day, stressing that this is not just scrutiny but utter scorn, it would be encouraging for activists that an outlet with a reputation for directness isn’t just accepting this bullshit meekly but is actively mocking it without mercy.

Martin Luther King, Jr:

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

When Dr. King wrote that, there was still some hope for the redemption of our society, so the silence of the masses really mattered.

Since then, the dismantling and neutralizing the structures of the New Deal, the consolidation of power and wealth in the hands of the few, the incredible effectiveness that modern technology gives the Infotainment-Propaganda Industrial Complex. . . all of that and more have combined to make the voices and actions of the “good people” — or their silence — mostly ineffective and irrelevant in creating real change.

I post it here fairly often, including once, already, in this thread, but if you haven’t read the Gilens & Page paper, I urge you to do so:

Realism isn’t the same thing as defeatism, Maisie, and it ought to be clear that Mona continues to fight, even knowing that it is probably hopeless.

It is hopeless…for this election. But the millennials likesocial democrats — they approve of them in polls and are sour on total capitalism. They also hate war.

The under-35s get their news almost totally online, and it’s a different, far less controlled information world out here.

So while it is hopeless in 2016, I also think it entirely possible Hillary will be a one-term president. And that by 2024, when yet more younger people have joined the millennials in the voting population, and my parents’ generation is entirely dead — and boomers are starting to significantly go — things will change.

But the millennials likesocial democrats — they approve of them in polls and are sour on total capitalism. They also hate war.

Yes, but that was also largely true of our generation, when we were young. We were able to effect some change, but the Owners and their minions (running dog lackeys ;^) learned and adapted and now exercise tighter control and disseminate more effective propaganda than ever before.

And please review the Gilens and Page research. Paraphrased: Average citizens and grassroots movements have little to no influence on policy.

Finally, for the past few months, I’ve been surrounded by millennials (lots of them) and have interacted with them on a daily basis. The vast majority show no interest at all in politics or other civic matters, beyond specific matters that impact them personally. Their major concerns appear to be career advancement and partying.

These are the reasons, and the key demographic factors, I want to see Maisie recognize as she continues railing against the system no matter what. And codgers like us, who aren’t inclined to bury our heads in despair or exhaustion (even if it’s understandable), must continue to support them every way we can.

I believe the good people of the US will reject everything these evil neolibcon scum and their representative HRC support in November.
The Zionist coalition against American deplorables.
She got her ass handed to her last night btw.
Yee haw!

The Fourth Estate is dead. Our most noble profession that keeps us from becoming a banana republic, and an oligarchy, is now stunningly, openly, biased. Never mind that half the country feels differently, they will keep their listeners rapt with falsities, half-truths, and most importantly, omissions of facts. This is so disturbing. After all, WHERE are we going to go to get the Truth? If we cannot trust the press, who can we trust?

Here we go again. Information from the Watergate style break in aimed at destroying the opposing party is hailed by none other than Glenn Greenwald who uses that information to viciously lie about the Clintons. Greenwald and Fang’s yellow journalism attempts to show Hillary’s great advantage with the press due to connections and strategy. Oh, never mind that Hillary’s coverage has been 84% negative versus Donald Trumps 43% versus Bernie Sanders 17% as a Harvard story meticulously documented in June of this year.

This disgusting law breaking on the part of the Kremlin who passes the illegally obtained information to Clinton hater Julian Assange who has admitted coordinartion with Roger Stone and Sean Hanity then over to Greenwald for further dissemination and distortion in true, unapologetic billionaire funded yellow journalism is perhaps too much to stomach, particularly in light of it furthering the cause and beliefs of Mr. Trump, the avowed Muslim hater, a religious group that Mr. Greenwald professes to defend. But then the lightly veiled misogyny that drives Mr. Greenwald has deep, deep roots, not only in the Roger Stone alt-Right but in the Assange-Greenwald so-called left.

In the previous case that Mr. Fang go going, regarding the transcripts, we learn that Hillary held her speeches back for exactly this reason, for the distortions the haters would create in the lines in the speech, such as being out of touch with middle class due to her and Bill’s wealth and leaving out the line that she’s never forgotten her roots.

In this case, the private strategies of a campaign are handed over to the opposing party, abrogating the rights of the first party. No, folks, this is not a leak, this is not the Pentagon Papers, this is not Edward Snowden, this is Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks, championed by none other–right to privacy advocate, Glenn Greenwald. Wake up, Mr. Greenwald because some day when you can see a bit more clearly about what has been done here, or perhaps when you find out you’ve been hacked and sullied for things you’ve innocently said to your partner, you will.

Millions worldwide will be watching the second US presidential debate to see who wins this dirty fight revolving around sex, violence and power. According to Ines Pohl, it is democracy that will be the loser.

The debate had no mention of the 9,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan or what their fate will be; no mention of any plan to rebuild U.S. infrastructure; no mention of relief for $1 trillion in student loan debt held by young people; etc. etc. etc. And the corporate media were obviously trying to pimp a direct attack on the Syrian government by the U.S. military, while not asking any questions about Saudi Arabia’s assault on Yemen or the ongoing violence in Libya.

The only bright spot is that both have such high negatives, that regardless of which ends up in the White House, millions of Americans will support criminal investigations and will protest against their agendas.

ZSM
yep. As long as the pimped out US media can keeping pushing wars for profits and WMD the American citizens keep getting punked and the world suffers as the colateral damage of US policies.

TPP was mentioned once in the debate by Donald but the media didnt give a farthing. NOTE that Trump did note that Hellary did a job on Libya to dump momar but failed to do the same in syria. That she instead prodded and financed the conflict got no play.

US media is the worst on the planet – worser than China or any state media because likely US media seems to be a zion state media.

Trumps America first implies no more stupid wars for zion,and although Afghanistan wasn’t mentioned,I’m absolutely sure Trump sees the futility of it all.
And of course our MSM is all zionist controlled.It’s part of the plot against our freedom to chart our own course in the world.
There will be blood.(when the Donald is POTUS)

Whether Trump wins, loses or loses big, he has empowered fascists, racists and bigots. He did not create them, but he has legitimized them by becoming the nominee and openly expressing their heinous, hateful beliefs. This, to me, is one of the most frightening developments on a domestic level in the U.S. this election cycle. Trump may go away, but the people he has empowered will not.

Jeremy is one of the best there is at investigative reporting — and I would urge him to take a voice recorder and spend a few months in the Red Zones, speaking with the people who empowered Donald Trump (which is a more accurate way of looking at this phenomenon than the other way around).

Those “fascists, racists and bigots” have become what they are as a result of their experiences of life in modern America. Like poor people, people of color, LGBT people, etc. they feel themselves oppressed, unrepresented, mistreated, lied to and cheated by our ruling establishment.

And they are right: they have truly suffered all of those things.

That they have chosen reprehensible and, ultimately, self-defeating views of reality, and lent their support to vile cretins like Trump, is perfectly “normal” and should not be a surprise to anyone. Right-wing populism has always arisen in similar circumstances.

Jeremy is right about one thing: these folks aren’t going away. And if their real concerns aren’t addressed by society and the Bosses in a meaningful way, the next demagogue who mines their discontent will likely be at least as offensive as Drumpfuck — and very well might be more effective.

Failure to understand the depth and magnitude of Red Zone anger and frustration is not merely unwise, it’s dangerous.

most well said. definitely speaks to me. In our currency scheme of competition for life support in a never ending hierarchy of inequality it should be obvious to everyone that such a scheme will inevitably give rise to the same effects as has always historically been the case when the wealty have it all and everyone else is left to rob each other until one day the only ones left to rob are the horders and deprivers.

Fascists, racists and bigots have been around in America since day one. We fought a civil war over racist bigotry; the rise of the Klu Klux Klan was about fascist racist bigotry (and served as one of the inspirations for the Nazi brownshirts); Wall Street was a top financier of the Nazi fascists in the 1930s; we had the American Nazi Party and the John Birch Society of the 1950s; Richard Nixon was the most fascist racist bigoted president since Woodrow Wilson; then we had the skinheads of the 1980s (a lot more violent than Trump supporters); the right-wing militia movement of the 1990s (see Timothy McVeigh); the racist bigoted anti-immigrant Minutemen of the 2000s – really, the phenomenon is nothing new.

Personally, I think Hillary Clinton’s eagerness to set up a no-fly zone over Syria and potentially launch World War III with Russia is a hell of a lot scarier than any bigoted Trump supporter could ever be.

Well, what I was thinking is that the best way to deal with such people is by talking to them, not fighting with them; many are just grossly ignorant or victims of American class structure (like, the skinheads in California many of whom were from poor white Southern families who’d migrated cross-country). It’s also a poverty problem; just as with angry black people stuck in their own cycle of poverty and disenfranchisement. So, I don’t think I was arguing with you; but the phenomenon doesn’t seem to be on the rise relative to what I’ve seen in the past, and it’s not particularly frightening, it’s just kind of pathetic.

As far as “fascist”, again, the real fascist supporters are have always been the large corporations who throw their weight behind government insiders; the fusion of the corporate monopoly (like IG Farben) and the state dictatorship (like the Nazi Party) is what real fascism is all about; calling Trump a ‘fascist’ just doesn’t work. The alliance that got together to push for the Iraq invasion in 2003 was the most extreme fascist threat in the United States since Nixon, actually, and Hillary Clinton was closer to that alliance than Donald Trump was; Trump, having so little Wall Street support, is hardly a fascist threat.

You obviously never saw the California skinheads of the 1980s, did you? Trump supporters and BLM activists are calm, friendly and reasonable in comparison. Anyway, here’s how to talk to a skinhead:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgIMuTELzXI

Explain to all sides that their crappy schools and crumbling infrastructure and polluted neighborhoods and lack of economic opportunity are all due to a system that is designed to concentrate wealth in a few hands, that in order to change this system they have to take back their government from the plutocratic billionaires, and for that to happen they have to work together, not fight among themselves like idiots.

Explain to all sides that their crappy schools and crumbling infrastructure and polluted neighborhoods and lack of economic opportunity are all due to a system that is designed to concentrate wealth in a few hands, that in order to change this system they have to take back their government from the plutocratic billionaires, and for that to happen they have to work together, not fight among themselves like idiots.

I’m hardwired for resistance, notwithstanding the futility, and the best way to resist the galloping fascism that is raging across America is to try to bring the elements of society that have long been pitted against each other, for the benefit of the Owners, to a common understanding of our collective plight and the real identity of the enemy.

Methinks that if one was actually honest they would state that there is racism and prejudice throughout the world,in varying degrees with different targets,from GB to Russia,To Syria,to Egypt,to Israel to China to India to Japan etc etc.Even black Africans are prejudiced vs other blacks or social strata ,as it is a human condition which will probably never ever end until our moderator installs our Citizenchips.
Acting on prejudice is the issue.Our thoughts are our own,from whites,to blacks to Chinese to native peoples everywhere.
And for the thousandth time,judging long passed people by the standards of today is actually a futile endeavor.
In fact,I guarantee personal honor standards,if not moral standards (which are eschewed by every asshole in our present govt) ,were much higher in those days when a mans word was his bond.People would duel over honor and die for it.I see very few honorable humans in power today.
If tricky dick was such a fascist,why did he go down wo a fight?
Sheesh.Hyperbole divide and conquer crap.

Someone has done this– she is a sociologist from Berkeley CA,
Arlie Hochschild– her book is “Strangers in their Own Land”- Anger and Mourning on the American Right. It is up for a U.S. National Book award. She went to the “reddest” state Louisiana and did just what you suggest.

Exceptional dissing of deplorables.sheesh.
The zionists are the most rabid aggressive racists on the planet.
Any words from Jeremy of confirmation of that obvious truth?
Divide and conquer used to work.No more.

Some time ago I’d decided that Mackey is so good on the Israel-Palestine issue only because he’s Irish, raised much of the time on the old sod. Irish Catholics have pretty much always sided with the Palestinians as fellow indigenous people fucked over by the Brits — via Zionism and European Jews.

That is, in Ireland the pro-Palestinian narrative isn’t radical, or even daring. It’s long been the norm.

Mackey is a conventional neoliberal who to americans appears unusually progressive on Israel only because he was raised in possibly the only Western country where the truth about Zionism has long been spoken and was never really taboo.

Bizarre but true: In the very early 70s, I attended a meeting, at SUNY Albany, where representatives of various “radical” groups made presentations and pitches. Among them were Sinn Féin and the Radical Zionist Alliance, which was a bunch of student Zionists who championed rights for Palestinians, while still supporting the expropriation of their homeland.

When the RZA kids rose to express support for the Sinn Féin presentation, the outraged Irish guys would have chased them from the room, had cooler heads not prevailed. They didn’t want support from any brand of Zionists.

Neoliberal, yup what would you expect from an establishment corporate Neoliberal website? Especially one run by elites with the full knowledge of what is in the Snowden archive but claim they are just so so elite that they and only they know what to redact, what to release, when to release and have never and will never make a mistake. Elite Neoliberals trying to be the “loyal opposition” within a poisoned system – Neoliberal through and through their owner pain i.i million in UK tax on revenue of over a billion. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/08/ebay-pays-11m-uk-tax-on-revenues-it-told-us-investors-were-11bn — The Intercept is a fully owned part of the eBay oligarch Neoliberal density. With a brand – hard hitting “journalism” and the Snowden association – please let me come home I promise to be good you know I did the right thing and didn’t really release anything dangerous. I want my own show on TV.

No, at least not always, but I’m right anyway. In the case of a news outlet, if it is a corporation and part of the dynasty of a Neoliberal oligarch then by definition it is part of the corporate press – it often criticizes. The NYT is a corporation owned by a Neoliberal oligarch, the Washington Post is a corporation owned by an oligarch, and The Intercept is a corporation owned by an oligarch. But the oligarch who owns The Intercept is, well, different and only publishes stories for good reasons.

Look, there is a ton of great talent and great work going on here, just don’t pretend its owners and management are some kind of saints and that a spade is not a spade. The Intercept is corporate media by definition. It is part of and well within the established Neoliberal power structure, and by definition augments and enhances (if successful) the established paradigm. Additionally, its owner and senior staff are dominated by white men who have exclusive control of public information who have made sure that inclusion, community or society have absolutely no say in the way it is handled. That is just plain wrong and a continuation of elitism and Neoliberal ideology.

If the Intercept wants to beat up the NYT so much why does it act so much like it?

Just as you have, it is easy to just blow this off rather that give up the illusion that Snowden or the editors and management of the Intercept are fallible humans and they have made mistakes – the glaring one is their Armand for absolute control over the Snowden archive and the deliberate exclusion of inclusiveness or community or society – the process is exclusive, elite and corporate – I do not agree that this is some kind of perfect paradise beyond criticism.

I don’t think Mackey has expressed an opinion on the women’s accusations. He’ll just grab any and every opportunity to demonize Trump — which is getting sillier by the day, as Trump immolates himself before the whole damned world.

I’m sure you are both aware that stuff that gets printed in august journals today only passes muster if it meets the expectations of the globalists.
And who prints all these august documents?The same globalist zionists.Puleeze.
We are living in the age of bullshite.

As i see it, DO NOT VOTE BECAUSE YOU WANT TO DEFEAT SOMEONE. Neither vote for someone just because you want to be on a winning side. IF you would prefer that Jill Stein fits your conscience, vote for her even if you doubt she would never be president because the winning is not betting against your will. This is a matter of self ownership. Look at it this way. If you favor Jill Stein, AND you vote for her, AND she does not win the election, ONE thing is for sure – you will have made progress because the elites will here loud and clear, you matter, and it only gets worse for them when they dont listen and it sets up 2018 and 2020 to TURN THE TABLES.

Unlike the rest of the Clinton campaign’s activities (vote rigging, accepting bribes, interfering with the Syrian cease fire, killing leakers…), this doesn’t rise to the level of criminality. For the named media personalities, this does rise to the level of prostitution.

This brings to mind the most recent thing from the Intercept which upset me- and it’s not Mackey. It’s the recent comment from Alex Emmons. Quoted here:
“Donald Trump promised, when elected president, to establish a “special prosecutor” to investigate Hillary Clinton, because “there has never been so many lies, so much deception.”

Clinton responded that it is “awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.”

Trump then explicitly threatened to jail her if he wins.

“Because you’d be in jail,” he said.

The FBI investigated Clinton’s private email server and did not recommend bringing any criminal charges.

Trump’s threat to jail the leader of a would-be opposition party is disturbingly reminiscent of a collapsing, unstable democracy, where an executive can direct the criminal justice system to jail whom he sees fit.”
I vehemently disagree. True, there are cases of executive branches abusing the law (See the nationwide Occupy crackdown, and the criminalization of the prior government of Ukraine), but if a government is genuinely corrupt, there should be investigations, prosecutions and jail. Hillary Clinton has clearly committed high crimes, from the illegal bombing of Libya, to funneling arms to terrorist groups in Syria. And, sadly, the Republicans are not going after her, for fear that it would take some of them down with her. Trump, who’s made a clean break with most Neocons (pun intended), would be more than willing to take her (and them) down hard. Were I to get elected, one of the first things I’d do would be to expand ADMAX Florence and FMC Carswell to ensure lots of accommodations for criminals from previous executive and legislative branches.
As an aside, while eliminating corruption has not been finished, one country that did try prosecuting former officials is doing rather well. Georgia recently returned the Georgian Dream coalition to power in parliament, and significantly reduced the vote for the corrupt United National Movement that was in power. The US and EU, of course, opposed the crackdown, and the US even gave sanctuary to the former president, Mikhail Saakashvili, prior to his (and other officials) fleeing to Ukraine.

It is a shame that Hillary’s media influence team did not consider utilizing psychics & mediums as that would have enabled them to place Lee Fang on the initial press gathering guest list so Hillary could immediately get out of the way him asking her “If she would release her Goldman Sachs speech transcripts”, plus Lee maybe could have used a couple of cocktails and some appetizers that Friday night.

Good article, but the reference to the previous Feb 2016 article showing how many of the TV pundits are paid by the Clinton campaign, yet not introduced as such, is precious and another prime example of elitist control here in Democracy Inc.

We’re not supposed to say it, but one of the fundamental problems with democracy is that humans, on average, just are not very smart. And, as George Carlin famously told us, “half of them are stupider than that.”

They can’t help it. And bright people don’t deserve credit for being smart. It’s largely genetic, with, certainly, a component arising from environment and nurturing — but not a large enough component to change the underlying reality.

The episode sheds light on a crucial but little-known dimension of Clinton’s diplomatic legacy. Under her leadership, the State Department worked closely with energy companies to spread fracking around the globe. . .

Clinton tapped a lawyer named David Goldwyn as her special envoy for international energy affairs; his charge was “to elevate energy diplomacy as a key function of US foreign policy.”

From 2005 to 2009 he directed the US-Libya Business Association, an organization funded primarily by US oil companies – including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Marathon – clamoring to tap Libya’s abundant supply.

As Clinton’s Wall Street positions about “private vs. public positions” help show, she is lying through her teeth about her actual policy agenda on everything from student loans to renewable energy to trade policy, and corporate media is facilitating this parade of lies.

So, who cares if it’s her or Trump? Either one will be an absolute disaster, and in both cases, they’ll pursue policies deeply damaging to the interests of average American citizens, whose only option will be to undermine and sabotage those policy agendas.

Donald Trump has just made brief appearance at the Four Seasons Hotel in St. Louis with three women who have accused Bill Clinton of rape or sexual assault and one woman whose rapist was defended by Hillary Clinton when Clinton was a 27-year-old lawyer in Arkansas.

I guess he won’t be doing the contrite penitent routine, huh?

Will Killary accuse the Russians of planting Juanita Broaddrick as a deep-cover mole?

Just when you thought this election couldn’t get any more sordid and tawdry.

My prediction – He’ll just waffle randomly like he always does, and probably wilt like a flower at some point like he did last time (only not quite so obviously). Hillary will have her best public face on, by which of course I mean she will lie almost constantly.

” On Friday, Obama administration officials claimed that Russia’s “senior-most officials” were responsible for that hack and others, although they provided no evidence for that assertion.”

Donna Brazille was pushing back with hard spin that by no means would she believe any Russian backed hacking and drop about Clinton’s emails. They sure laid out the “Russians are coming” fall back to protect Hillary from what was coming. Have they forgotten that they fired DNC chaired based on what was dropped about the way the DNC “system is rigged”

Then we had Rachel Maddow on MSNBC fervently protecting HRC from being called an enabler of a sexual predator. Amazing Maddow would consider herself a feminist. Hopefully people will not forget that HRC opened this seedy yet important sexist issue.

But why Rachel, Donna Brazille and others provide cover for Clinton’s war record and her decades long protection of a sexual predator. These MSM host ,analyst have also provided Clinton cover on the Wall Street issues, Comey findings etc.

All in a days work I guess of extremely biased journalist, analyst with their own agendas almost always showing

Before Maddow joined MSNBC, when she was on Air America, she was vociferously critical of both Clintons and of Third Way/Blue Dog Democrats. Being given entree to the establishment has a way corrupting people.

No surprises here. Anyone with more than a dozen functioning brain cells knows that the MSM has been in the tank for the Democrats (and now Hitlery) for over thirty-odd years. Who remembers ‘Uncle’ Walter Cronkite deciding the VietNam war was bad and defaming our troops over there every night? Soviet Russia had ‘Pravda’, we have The New York ‘Times’. Not a dimes worth of difference between them.

And they hated GWBush?
They made a superhero out of a superzero,who ,let 9-11 happen on his watch,and backed every crazy scheme he did,as Zion loved him.
They only backed off post Iraq,when it was clear it was a giant clusterf *ck.And they back every stupid thing this current whore of zion does,and not one discouraging word.
Did anyone see the crummy jobs report?

zzzzzzzz…. I bet they had shopping lists and made purchases by credit card.

Glenn, you do some really good work, but some of The Intercept is lame. After all that great Snowdon stuff, didn’t you feel silly writing this post? Much ado about nothing; about how the whole freakin’ world works. There’s nothing unusual or even terrible about anything here. There’s just no there there.

Tell Julian that FancyBear and his other eastern buddies need to get more creative.

I disagree. It’s direct insider info, and I think it’s interesting as hell. For instance, I was surprised to see that Arianna Huffington had declined this particular invitation, considering her huffingtonpost comes off as little more than a Hillary Clinton newsletter so much of the time. Would you have guessed that?

For example, on the smear-Bernie-Sanders campaign run by Hillary Clinton:

Only a handful of Clinton surrogates have attacked Sanders directly, and it remains to be seen whether the gist of the email from Correct the Record will be fed to anyone other than reporters. If so, the attack would be in the vein of what Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said about Sanders earlier this year — that he’s unelectable, since he’s a self-identified democratic socialist. —

The Secret Service are probably on heightened alert tonight in case Hillary collapses and Trump tries to pick her up by the pussy. One supposes he could explain what he said ten years ago by saying “that was when I was a Democrat, hanging round with people like Bill and Hillary Clinton,” or saying this was just his “pubic” face rather than the face of his privates. God knows, it’s boring as hell watching America submissively agree to let this farce of an election proceed without a chorus of raspberries from all sides.

Two lying multimillionaires pretending to give a hoot about common folk. Jesus fucking Christ.

Vote Jill Stein, because not being a corporatist, militarist or imperialist really does matter.

Perhaps overlooked is the simple fact that most do not get to interact with a FPotusa couple within their lifetime. And it is flattering and interesting to have that opportunity.

It will undoubtedly be something they will tell their grandkids about? So it goes.
The pride of having been able to come so close to someone so historical and so Powerful.
This what CrookdClintons have capitalized on: the ultimate power couple. And they take every advantage they can.
People are embarrssed by what the CrookdClintons do, but who is going to call them out?
Porn star prez?b
So we have clintonemail.com to talk to criminals. It is that simple.
We have Public and Private policies– which really is the definition of a LIE.

Read Matthew Yglesias 10-07-2016 Vox:
“The lesson of Hillary secret speeches is she’s exactly who we already knew she was….. I personally find it kind of charming but most Americans seem not to–…peeling back further layers of the onion and delving into deeper realms of secrecy isn’t going to teach us much of anything new about her.”

Great article! Thank you. One has to wonder who the persons are “behind the curtain”? It takes producers or editors to put the pressure on for these lickspittles, calling themselves journalists to heel.

Journalists in third world countries are afraid of their own governments. They can be fined, jailed, and even killed for seeking the truth. But there are conscientious journalists who strive to serve the public with thoroughness, honesty and integrity.

Journalists in the US are afraid of not being invited to the best parties. They are willing to lie, cover up, peddle manufactured propaganda, all so that they can been seen on CNN and MSNBC for personal gain.

This is worse than a third world country. North Korea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Eritrea, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Equatorial Guinea, Syria and Bahrain have shuttered independent newspapers and television stations, used state media as a propaganda weapon, and jailed, fined, and harassed journalists. At least the “government” newspaper in those countries don’t pretend to be objective or hard hitting.

In the US, the big name journalists and TV stars trade their objectivity and values for some hors d’oeuvres, free booze, and access to the “real insiders”.

But I was not surprised to see the names on your list. We knew that they have been shills for Mrs. Clinton for years. They pretend to be objective but they are not fooling anyone. It is so obvious that they are mouthpieces of the government.

That’s why we stopped watching “the news” on the major TV and Cable channels.

An excellent post. As far as I am concerned, the media has a requirement to take an adversarial position to those wielding great power. The fact that 98% of the MSM has abdicated that responsibility has aided and abetted war crimes. Crimes that may likely go unpunished in my lifetime.

Very interesting line of inquiry. I posed a similar question to Lee Fang on twitter several days ago but he hasn’t gotten back to me. The CFR has considerable power and influence and is, as the article asserts, the organization that most closely resembles a Ruling Class.

You mention McCain’s tire swing obvious example, leave out all these others (they good was much better on Bush’s plane than Gore’s, iirc), and in the very next sentence su it’s usually done behind closed doors, when it plainly isn’t. Can you show me on the doll where Hillary touched you?

I’m Shocked !! Shocked I tell you…how could it be that the Media/Press now has become the 4th branch of Government. Weren’t these supposed “journalists” supposed to report the Truth and not what they’ve been fed ???
It seems that Ben Rhoades description of the media is correct. They don’t know anything and all they want to do is be close to the powers that be. They all want to be celebrities now…..
This is why no one believes in the Media and why they are so despised !!

Well it’s ‘olds,’ really, since Clinton and the mainstream media have been corrupt for a long time – but morons keep denying it, so it has to be restated in new and exciting demonstrations by responsible reporters for the benefit of the sort of intellectual midgets who think Clinton is okay.

There are some nice sentiments in the movie, but the pig is deliberately portrayed as a surprisingly manipulative and violent egoist in it – perhaps she’s different elsewhere; looking on YouTube there are certainly a lot of clips of her being shallow and hitting other puppets, but maybe it’s selective editing.

In the movie Miss Piggy can go from sweet to obnoxious at the drop of a hat, and the joke is supposed to be that the sweetness is utterly phony – this also seems very like Clinton to me!

Jesus, these representatives of the press are embarrassingly submissive and obsequious.

Americans really are largely weak-minded and obedient, partly due to propaganda from these sort of twits.

Trump’s supporters often speak of an emasculated nation (pussyfied is their insulting word for it) that meekly takes crap from the establishment (a cruel irony since Trump is not only of the elite himself, he’s an embodied political absurdity), and this meme hits home because there really is a lot of evidence for it.

The parties for the media executives who all these scribblers work for have way better food.
Making sure the people who might ask the wrong questions never get hired is step one.
And they write big checks too.

OK, OK… sorry.
Step one is the owners of the media outlets hiring the executives who won’t hire the people who might ask the wrong questions.
There are never emails about their parties.

It’s very refreshing to see the Queen’s media quislings named and exposed for what they are but if much of the rest of the media ignores the story and other leaks while seeming to portray these leaks as Putin’s possibly altered propaganda there is something happening here and it is becoming clear.

I have been waiting to see how the PTB would guarantee their control of the outcome of this election and what has just transpired seems to be a soft coup with the first target for plotters usually being shutting down or taking control of the flow of news and information. Except for the AP and the Intercept these email stories have been mostly ignored or twisted into anti-Putin spin now with the active involvement of Homeland Security and most everyone involved is sticking to the Party Line.

Does anyone doubt that a ‘leak’ about similar sorts of gatherings and mutuality with ‘friendly’ media personalities would be shouted as proof of the lack of a free press if it took place in any country on the demonize list?

Well, to be fair, many other countries in which no one pretends to have a dedication to a free press this kind of cozy partying isn’t necessary. We have a “free press” so what happens here is “access journalism.” Being invited to these parties makes them feel all savvy and important.

They know they’ll lose that All Important Access if they are critical beyond a certain point. That’s how the press is controlled here.

If I thought it possible to summon ghosts, I’d get H. L. Mencken and Izzy Stone at typewriters to thunder about this god-awful, mock-worthy mess that our “free press” has become.

Of course, the reason why ‘no one pretends’ certain countries have a free press, while ‘everyone’ pretends certain other countries have a free press is because those opinions are fed to us as a steady diet from birth, reinforced as a social norm that it is taboo to break from, and ‘verified’ by agencies rooted in those norms that lose all credibility the second they dissent. It was exactly this sort of thing that kept slavery alive.

[And for God’s sakes when will certain people finally come to their senses and realize that Noam Chomsky (and probably his spawn, Aviva) is nothing more than a CIA stooge and Wall Street mouthpiece? Yo, Chomsky, CIA says call home!]

McCain had been a rhino since the first time he was elected. Called TRUMP supporters wacko birds and has done nothing for AZ. As head of the veterans committee three PHX VA is rated the worst.
He is a prime example of why we need term limits

McCain called Trump supporters wacko Birds when he held a rally here in Phoenix. He is a Rhino from the beginning of his term and a perfect example of why we need term limits. As head of the veterans committee the Phoenix Veterans Administration is held up as one of the worst examples of this government program McCain has to go Trump 216 now more than ever

it’s ironic that the clinton supporters who constantly use phrases like “grow up” and “get educated” probably won’t bat an eyelash at this news. it will go over their heads and everyone will focus on the tabloid nonsense of trump’s 11 year old frat boy banter. if they care more about that salacious identity-politics-feeding trash than 900 dead haitians or saudis bombing funerals in yemen (assuming they even heard about those during the hysterical wall-to-wall coverage of the trump tape) then they won’t even register something as “inside baseball” as this.

plus, as many people online and elsewhere have mentioned, the scary thing isn’t that clinton supporters are ignorant of her awful behavior; it’s that they know about it and don’t care at all. i was hoping the assange/wikileaks drops would contain something more severe than this in any case…we know it’s out there but seeing is believing for many people. maybe all that stuff was in the wiped emails. oh well. yet another election decided by tits and ass.

A lot of us had this figured out. The Clinton right wing have extraordinary power, and they have took over (and corrupted) the Democratic Party itself some 20 years ago. A good share of the media marketed to liberals was retooled to reflect the Clinton ideology, dismissing (or even denying!) the ugly consequences of the Clinton agenda. They very effectively got MSNBC (for example) on a tight corporate leash early on, and the last I watched, they were selling the right wing agenda to the beat of a rock and roll song.

Some fuckwit on Twitter claimed Glenn Greenwald is just jealous he wasn’t invited to the intimate party Hillary held for all her journalist pals. That literally made me laugh out loud.

As many know, I’m Glenn’s former law partner, and I know the hilarious face he makes (this is petty close) when contemplating that he must spend time in the presence of people he finds stupid and insufferable. He’d do nearly anything to get out off having to go to such a party, possibly even slit his wrists.

Would never happen. It’s a quirk of his personality that he has nearly zero poker face on any sort of interpersonal level. When he doesn’t want to go somewhere, and has disdain for those attending, he can hide it only with some significant difficulty.

“As many know, I’m Glenn’s former law partner, and I know the hilarious face he makes (this is petty close) when contemplating that he must spend time in the presence of people he finds stupid and insufferable.”

Wha?They are clobbering him over sexual word crap when The Clintons are let off scot free by the MSM.
Highlighting their corruption when no one else will is a winning hand,and Bent Dick is a known sexual predator with actual rape in his past.Juanita Broadrick(sic?)?
Sheesh.

And after the election, our liberal bourgeoisie will rage against those who “were lazy to vote” for Clinton. That said, it would take a people’s movement to pull us off this truck that’s speeding for the cliff’s edge. Consider that we’ve just been through another eight years of media (and people) working hard to more deeply pit us against each other by race and class, and calculate the odds of being able to form a movement.

Interesting. The dynamics between reporters and some activist sources would be interesting to explore as well if one is really interested in showing how the news gets made. Take the antifracking pipeline resistance movement for example.

[. . .] “I have no way of knowing the accuracy of documents dumped by this hacking organization,” Kaine told CNN, noting that US intelligence officials have accused Russian security services of orchestrating the hack in order to influence the election. “If that is in fact true, then you cannot accept as gospel truth anything they put in a document.”

Pressed about Clinton’s positions, Kaine said: “I have no way of knowing that.”

The CNN host, Jake Tapper, insisted: “You could ask her.” Kaine replied: “I haven’t asked her. But you asked me about her position on trade and her position on trade is very clear.”

Well, maybe her public position is clear.

And even Kaine’s “doubts” are so wishy-washy and mealy-mouthed that he could successfully deny he actually expressed doubt.

The people who carry water for our Masters are — all of them — among the creepiest and sleaziest shitheads on the planet.

On Saturday, Sanders reaffirmed his support for Clinton, saying: “Whatever Secretary Clinton may or may not have said behind closed doors on Wall Street, I am determined to implement the agenda of the Democratic party platform, which was agreed to by her campaign.”

I bet she did. And I’m sure the former senior advisor (along with Rahm Emanuel) to Bill Clinton was really tough on the Acting Chair of the DNC.

Right?

It really might not be such a great idea to recklessly cast aspersions about WikiLeaks’ accuracy and integrity, with a month to go in the campaign. Julian and his team have been impeccably trustworthy, but they can, no doubt, remain trustworthy and still clobber the hell out of the Wicked Witch in that time period.

Interesting strategy they have taken since the DNC “rigged system” drop. They were sure quick to act on those email leaks. Did not question the “accuracy” then. They must have decided to run with this “the Russians are coming” strategy way back then. Laid the ground work. Hell they probably put out a release to Maddow, Joy Reid etc they all ran wile with the Russians are hacking as soon as they could.

Fueled that perception daily on MSNBC for weeks, Knowing there would be more drops having to do with Hillary’s emails, transcripts. Set it up so that they could dismiss all future Wikileak drops.

When I read about the latest wiki dump on HRC, I was disgusted by the MSM’s complete lack of coverage. Here in the UK, there was literally nothing about it. It was Trump this, Trump that. Journalism in the mainstream is dead. There is no ambition or desire among the current crop who operate in the mainstream to expose the truth. It’s a disgrace. I offer my thanks to the Intercept and other independent outlets for resisting the madness.

Nothing here. It’s just more of the Greenwald jihad – with a helping hand from Russian spy agencies (Guccifer, etc.) – supplying stolen emails that Putin hopes will prevent what he dreads most: Hillary in the White House. Hey Glenn, the anal fumes you inhale going down on your boy friend have addled what’s left in your mind, oh yee of small hands.

If you read the article it was actually quite measured. He even mentions at the end that all presidential campaigns engage in these kind of tactics. Also, your obviously unhealthy obsession with Greenwald’s sexual practices reveals far more about your mind than his.

The only ‘anal fumes’ are coming from your foul breath which probably comes from all the bullshit you suck up, and spout, or maybe from you having your brown tongue right up Hellary’s ass. So go fuck yourself buddy.

Oh yee of small dick, did this exposure hurt you, or maybe like the Obama administration, you feel the need to keep perpetuating bullshit about Russia because they are doing such a great job destroying US-backed, Al Qaeda-affiliated “rebels” in eastern Aleppo?

Yesterday, and today, I played a game. Just the day before (Friday) the new Wikileaks dumb came. Where are the headlines?! I played a game. I counted the number of pictures of Trump on their online pages with corresponding articles. It is AMAZING. Donald Trumps picture (article too) popped up something like 11 times on The Guardians U.S. page, like 5 to 6 on Politico, Huffington Post: at least that many if not more. Say the word “pus^*” 10 years ago, and that beats any other relevant Wikileaks e-mails, hands down! I will say this, I am not a Trump fan, but what do they think, one more irrelevant Trump story will get his voter’s on the other side of this. The so- called press are so devoid of connection to investigative journalism and so filled with sensational stories, treating the public to the “jersey shore” version of news for so many years. They have helped CREATE the Trump voters.

What a sad state our Nation is in. Freedom of the Press was intended by our forefathers as a necessary means of keeping the elected somewhat honest. Now, the press is just propaganda. Of course we’ve known it, but when it’s in our faces thusly, it turns my stomach.

One needs to put into question the authenticity of this content, especially with assertions from the intelligence community that foreign goverments want to meddle with domestic election process through said source. Without evidence this content is highly questionable.

Had to go back and look at the Clinton loyalist list looking for Lawrence O’Donnell’s name. Not there. He has been such a Clinton loyalist on his program. Never ever bringing up her war record, Comey findings, Wall Street times etc.

All of MSNBC host going after Trumps horrible sexism but protecting Hillary who protected Bill from his sexual predator behavior’s

Funny you should mention this, because today both the NY Times and The Washington Post are running articles titled “inside Trump Tower…” The NYTimes version is “Inside Trump Tower: An Increasingly Alone and Upset Donald Trump.” The WashPo’s version is “Inside Trump Tower: The Defiant and Insulated Republican Nominee.”
I wonder who in Clinton’s camp is the real writer of these articles and then slapped the reporters’ names on them? Isn’t there a term for this? Plagiarism maybe?? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
What is sad here is that they are doing this right Out in the open and the sheep will lap it up. I’m a Johnson (former Sanders) supporter and this is the kind of stuff that makes me really dislike Hillary Clinton.

Pretty shocking to learn that people go to sympathetic ears when they want their story told the way they want it. Can you imagine that the Hillary campaign isn’t going to Sean Hannity with this stuff? Brilliant expose, Glenn.

Guccifer 2.0 may indeed be Russian. Providing no evidence though says maybe they don’t really know – and are bothered more by that than the thought of blaming Russia erroneously. And whether Russian or not I doubt motives were ever about somehow helping Russia or even Trump – so much as, just like Wikileaks, wanting to slow down the establishment’s empire building.

I have a feeling in their heart at least – Guccifer 2.0 wears a Guy Fawkes mask.

Maddow, Matthews, ODonnell, Joy Reid, Hallie Jackson all running cover for HRC’s horrific war record for years. Barely mentioning the Comey findiings

Now we are hearing all of them and more hammering Trump’s despicable sexist comments and actions while ignoring Hillary’s protection of a sexual predator her husband.

The choice..A sexist, racist billionaire in White House, Or a multi millionaire (most of her money made off of Wall Street) proven and deadly war hawk and also an enabler of a sexual predator along with the predator living in the White House…..again.

Oy vey
Shameful and oh so dangerous,

Today (Sunday) we keep hearing many of these same media host saying the “elephant in the room” tonight is Trump’s sexist comments and actions. The elephant in the room is Clinton’s deadly war record. They never talk about this horrific and critical issue

It’s interesting that this time there isn’t much shaming of Jill Stein supporters (compared to what it was like to be a Ralph Nader supporter back in the day). The funneling of every voter, right or left, toward the Only Possible Candidate seems to be going really well. After everybody has had an opportunity to posture about their bedrock principles on the matter of not being an embarrassing bloviator, we can move on to full scale thermonuclear war with Russia! It took a while after 1989 to work the bugs out, but hey, we’re right back on track.

Well, they are smearing her as an anti-Vaxxer (she’s not), a fan of Russia (she’s not), and accuse her opponent of racism (which is why he’s the VP of a white woman). Even then people are posting all sorts of things that I see regularly on how bad Trump is and saying it’s why we have to vote for her. (Some of the same is going on in some circles for the Libertarian side, particularly among the religious reactionaries, who fear Libertarian social ideas.)
If Trump wins, rest assured, the Hillaryites will treat the Stein (and Johnson) voters worse than Nader. After all, Bush won in part thanks to dirty tricks in Florida (and elsewhere), and the Supreme Court (including several justices who violated their oaths). Further, Gore didn’t have the sense of entitlement and anointing that Clinton does.

Here we go again. Information from the Watergate style break in aimed at destroying the opposing party is hailed by none other than Glenn Greenwald who uses that information to viciously lie about the Clintons. Greenwald and Fang’s yellow journalism attempts to show Hillary’s great advantage with the press due to connections and strategy. Oh, never mind that Hillary’s coverage has been 84% negative versus Donald Trumps 43% versus Bernie Sanders 17% as a Harvard story meticulously documented in June of this year.

This disgusting law breaking on the part of the Kremlin who passes the illegally obtained information to Clinton hater Julian Assange who has admitted coordination with Roger Stone and Sean Hanity then over to Greenwald for further dissemination and distortion in true, unapologetic billionaire funded yellow journalism is perhaps too much to stomach, particularly in light of it furthering the cause and beliefs of Mr. Trump, the avowed Muslim hater, a religious group that Mr. Greenwald professes to defend. But then the lightly veiled misogyny that drives Mr. Greenwald has deep, deep roots, not only in the Roger Stone alt-Right but in the Assange-Greenwald so-called left.

In the previous case that Mr. Fang got going, regarding the transcripts, we learn that Hillary held her speeches back because of the the distortions the haters would create in the lines in the speech, such as being out of touch with middle class due to her and Bill’s wealth and leaving out the line that she’s never forgotten her roots.

In this case, the private strategies of a campaign are handed over to the opposing party, abrogating the rights of the first party, and handed to the likes of Greenwald and Fox News. No, folks, this is not a leak, this is not the Pentagon Papers, this is not Edward Snowden, this is Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks, championed by none other than–right to privacy advocate, Glenn Greenwald. Wake up, Mr. Greenwald because some day when you can see a bit more clearly about what has been done here, or perhaps when you find out you’ve been hacked and sullied for things you’ve innocently said to your partner, you will.

Glenn et al, I’m a little concerned as much about you and your process – or in this case, lack of same? – than I am about any ‘revelations’ here (of the latter, it seems absolutely no different – unfortunately- from any American political campaign these days; don’t you agree?).

Since it’s not silly to assume these (selective? modified?) leaks came from Russian intelligence services, don’t you have a responsibility to not publish them until you’ve confirmed that they haven’t been altered in any way- which means a lot more than just giving someone 24 hours to comment or not. (e.g. NYTimes considered positive confirmation so serious with respect to Trump’s tax returns that they delayed, travelled, you name it, to get real, positive confirmation). By refusing to be serious about your journalistic responsibilities, you could be no better than julian Assange: a willing tool of a hostile foreign power. Why would you want to do that?

It is not surprising that those who make themselves a willing tool of the Clinton campaign assume that someone with a counter-narrative must have made themselves a willing tool of Vladimir Putin.

The truth is far more frightening than that: Mr. Greenwald is a loose cannon! He is making his own decisions on what constitutes newsworthy subject matter and somehow, someone has given him a platform to advance his own personal agenda. All politicians and their partisans, regardless of their political affiliation, can agree this is a dangerous practice which must be stopped.

The NY Times, as everyone knows, sat on their knowledge of the warrantless wiretapping program for over a year, in order to avoid damaging George Bush’s election chances. I doubt Mr. Greenwald would show such discipline. A small number of mainstream news outlets have demonstrated by their actions they are worthy to be selected as gatekeepers of what information should be released to the rabble, er, general public. They should be granted exclusive license to disseminate the news. I understand the government is working on this, as soon as they can smooth out a few wrinkles posed by the First Amendment.

These e-mails are valuable historic documents, chronicling what is probably the last time a campaign will rely on this classic model for managing the press. It worked well for over a century, but has now been rendered obsolete in the age of social media.

The new model is more do-it-yourself, having the candidate themselves composing some semi-coherent tweets at 3:00 am or distributing behind the scenes tapes from old reality shows. The public enjoys this unfiltered approach and therefore it is far more effective at controlling the news cycle and attracting attention. Frankly, the MSM, for all their eagerness to please, turned out a fairly bland formulaic coverage that failed to impress. People want to hear the candidates talk about the issues that matter, like grabbing pussy, in their own words, not the watered down, pseudo-intellectual pap turned out by the old fashioned mainstream media.

Mr Fang and Mr Greenwald, this is significant! Thank you for doing this piece. While flipping through the channels this am, everyone of them was running long pieces about Trump. None of it was favorable and NOTHING about HRC. No coincidence that a representative or more from every single channel trashing Trump is on the “Columnist/pundit calls” list above.

Thank you! Thank you! It’s disgusting the White House is in on the attempt to taint HRC emails with a bogus story. The Russians hacked those emails, yeah right. I’m glad they told me who to thank, Russians… (the story isn’t true so I’m not thanking the Russians, it’s a joke you morons)

I do appreciate your confidence and judgement on this matter. Keep it up!

Leaving aside what we may or may not know about our source: who cares what “agenda” sources have? As a journalist, the only relevant inquiry is whether the documents and information provided is relevant and in the public interest.

Here’s the two-time Pulitzer-Prize winning NYT reporter David Barstow – who just reported on Trump’s tax returns, which was mailed to NYT by someone he doesn’t know – explaining why, as a journalist, he doesn’t care what “motives” the source has. Every source has an agenda.

Really? What makes you say Intercept authors “are still trying to get hired by the MSM”? Could it be blind support for the oligarchy, which owns the MSM?

You said the MSM is dying. So why would Intercept authors want to take a job without a future at the fourth column, when they and the quickly growing fifth column, are two reasons why the MSM is dying?

“Just give us some truth now,all we want is the truth”(John Lennon)
Yes,it has been mostly anti Trump writing,but the comments are mostly anti H.B.
Again this just emblematic of the fix,she fixed Berniie with the MSMs assistance,and now Trump is the target on their wall.Do people realize the ramifications of all this if they succeed?We would no longer be a democracy,but a dictatorship of the 1%.
And what actually cost Sanders?The South.He won just about every other non minority dominated city or state.Wasn’t he cheated in California?By pre-election BS?And why wasn’t the southern 90% vs. 10 % challenged,at least as some type of bias?
Why do blacks like her anyway?
And the old;Opinions are like assholes,everyone’s got one,fits also.

Boy this is real up-to-date NEWS. I wonder why nobody else in the past 30 years has ever revealed that the Clintons get news articles that are slanted in their favor? I’ll wager this is astonishng news to the Clinton News Nework (CNN).

What does the GOP do ? Trump has probably hired Roger Ailes and has Bannon of Breitbart on the payroll in a bit more direct compromise of so called “journalistic ethics”. The revolving door swings wide in both parties as the crisis of the 2 party system deepens. The People know no one is to be trusted.

Tapper has reported some things that should have changed races. He was one of the few who paid attention to the poll closings in the SC Republican primary WAAAAAAAAY back in 2000 when he worked at Salon. Said poll closings broke the law, and helped ensure Bush’s “victory” over McCain in the primaries. (As an aside, after 2000, a lot of states ended their state running primaries and turned them over to the parties, like SC did (a legacy of Jim Crow). And this year, a lot of polling places were closed in Democratic primaries…)
He also did good coverage of the Florida debacle, which should have sunk Bush (and damaged Gore too).

Some how, some way, awareness of these tactics and the increasingly blurred line between journalism/PR/propaganda is being absorbed/perceived by the public (whether they read Intercept or not). Resulting in continued erosion of faith in journalism, as measured by Pew polling, etc.
GG, looking forward to your coming visit to Santa Fe and hope there may be a chance to meet after all these years.

By the way, a couple of weeks ago, I posted my little question at https://presidentialopenquestions.com/ . They, allegedly, are taking “the people’s” questions and the 30 most popular as voted by “the public” are given to the moderators who may decide to use some of them at the townhall.

So, to make the story short, my question, asking Hillary to explain why, given her past, should anyone trust her as our president, was quickly voted to ‘number 3′ and climbing, actually ‘trending number 2′. I was so excited, I called a coworker and I was sharing my screen so he could see how, with every screen refresh, dozens of more votes were added to my question.

Then… it just disappeared. I emailed the site asking what made them remove the third, soon to become the second most popular question at their site. A couple of hours later I actually received a reply. It basically said “oops, we are so sorry” but, of course, not a hint that they had any intention to reinstate my question.

Of course, nobody would ever attempt to manipulate or interfere with such as important process as that where ‘real people’ are given the opportunity to ask the real powerful anything. For as long as their questions are what the real powerful are willing to hear and answer.

Interesting. I just read Scott Adam, Dilbert cartoon creator, blog today. He is very critical of Hillary. He had had speaking engagements cancelled for next year. Opportunity cost US dollars one million.

And they never learn. After a couple of years of the government and the powerful enjoying their ability to be watching us as they pleased and, when found, their lapdogs barking the “let them survey me coz I got nothin’ to hide”, now it’s their turn to see what it’s like to be intrusively watched.

It’s so funny because I have little doubt that our super-corrupt politicians and oligarchs are increasingly adopting the Mafiosi style methods of interactions. Probably remove their phones’ batteries whenever they are expressing their PRIVATE views on things, refrain from emailing anything that could be even remotely compromising, probably having to travel hundreds of miles and be physically in the same room with no electronics in it whenever important things are to be plotted.

So, keep exposing them. This is exactly what they deserve. Because, yes, Hillary has her PUBLIC, not so attractive face and she has her UGLY as in ‘private’ face and I have some suspicion on which is her real face.

Clinton’s crime syndicate runs deep. This media frenzy over decade old Trump comments to cover Hillary’s @$$ while she’s being gutted by Wikileaks and FBI releases… Trump’s character is abhorrent, but he is not manifest evil like Hillary. She will never get my vote.

Maybe, although most, like the polititians that they cover, have long ceased to be embarrassed by anything, ….as long as it’s not sex. Also, it’s a marker of their top position in the great scheme of things which I’m sure is satisfying.